A Rush of Blood to the Head
by hipopotamduzy
Summary: My version of the chapter 20 of "Twilight" in EPOV. What exactly was Edward doing and thinking when he went for hunt for James? OOC a little bit, my characters. One shot.


**Chapter notes:**

Big thanks to my Betas from PTB (.com/ptb_twilight/). They've done an amazing job and if you see any errors it's only my fault. 

**Also lot's of hugs and chocolate for **_**Midnight**_**. You couldn't read this story without her. **

**As always, the characters and their world belong to Stephenie Meyer.**

****

From the very beginning, I knew it was inevitable.

From the strong, rushing, omnipresent wind you can't hide, despite your struggles and hopes. The same goes with me being unable to save Bella from the consequences of socializing with vampires.

I was worried about her. Wondering what might happen to her when I was not around made my fingers clench on the edge of the seat. It didn't take long for the damage to be seen. I could feel the leather crumble between my fingers. Soft, tiny particles quickly began to scatter about the floor. They looked like soft sawdust of a strange color. Driving my fingers into the leather felt like I was digging my fingers into my stone, no longer beating heart, tearing it apart with each and every single mile that was taking me farther away from Bella.

I didn't bother to relax my grip.

Individual shapes of the cars were hard to extract from the colorful streaks stretching behind, as the pace Carlisle drove was too fast, even for my sharp eyes. I knew that for me as well as for Bella, he was betraying all his rules. He had agreed to kill James. Kill him like an animal that he actually is. I knew it. I didn't even have to read my enemy's mind to confirm it. Only a purely instinctual, mindless creature like James could act as he did.

I closed my eyes and because of door not being closed tight enough I could feel gentle gusts of fresh air on my face. The wind was rustling restlessly, urging some action. Decisive, actual, conclusive ones. Forcing me to do something. _To Bella, Bella, to Bella…_

I knew I was doing the considerate and righteous thing. That was the proper way to act. I should leave Bella with Jasper and Alice and deal with the absolute threat, James, by myself. It was the only choice. However, I couldn't stop thinking how much I wanted to be by her side now, to protect and guard her, no matter the cost. Were it only up to me, without a doubt, I would go straight to her. Like a moth to a flame, for the sake of my very own doom, self-destroying at the end. Isn't it wonderful, even for the shortest of moments, when the scant insect fills itself with this light and warmth, lets itself be carried away by euphoria, orbiting round the shiny sphere? For me, Bella is such a light, warm and bright sphere glowing in the darkness of an ever-winter night. Even when my eyes are shut, she is still like golden sparks flickering beneath them.

More than hearing in my mind, I could feel Carlisle nervously glancing at me from the driver's seat . I knew what was bothering him. Each muscle of my body was shivering, tensed to the full and ready. I heard Emmett's thoughts behind me. All of them revolving around how much 'fun' the hunt would be. I moved nervously when one of Emmett's more obnoxious thoughts made its way to the forefront of his mind: _Thanks to that vulnerable human, Bella and Edward's moronic ideas, I'm gonna have some fun… _

I managed to disguise a not so laudable move towards my brother. I hoped so, at least.

I tucked my head between the window and the headrest. With unchanging closed eyes, indifferent to the background, I wanted no more than to look at Bella for the rest of my life or the time that was left, to be more precise.

Nonetheless, Emmett was right. Everything that happened was because of me: my thoughtlessness, impudence, self-righteousness, and blindness. There was no one else to blame, including Bella, that's for sure. In all this mess, she was the only purely innocent one. She was entirely vulnerable, without a shield, nothing that could protect her from the cruel environment that surrounded me, as well as my world. She was so easily breakable, fragile, so real yet as elusive as a soap bubble. It was me who brought all the pain and suffering about. The scariest part would not be her death, but consciousness that I squandered her chance to lead a happy, normal, and human life which she deserved more than anything else. Heaven and all the things that happen to people after their Earthly existence. Something I did not even dare to think about. Somewhere at the back of my head, there was a reflection which I had seen ever since I became familiar with Alice's predictions. Pale, subtle shimmering in the daylight, perfect faces... Bella the vampire staying with me for eternity. Thinking about it was like having a warm bright sphere always in front of my eyes, yet never getting burnt. It would be impossible to get lost, impossible to get frozen then... My very personal source of everlasting happiness. Just for me. Forever.

At least my egoism signified some humanity survived in me. However, these would be only the worst qualities I possessed.

I twitched violently, even though I didn't mean to.

Her face appeared in front of my eyes. Soft and warm with rose colored cheeks. Shiny, chocolate brown eyes, full of many various thoughts and emotions. This is how she ought to be. Not marble and cold. Not dead. I clenched my fists tightly. I can't let this happen. Her soul has to be saved and I should spare no efforts as there is nothing more important. When it's all over with James, when he… I have to leave her, as long as I can force myself to do so. Leave her to be driven by her own fate which, for sure, is a dozen times better than the one she would have had to share living with me. I, personally, will be waiting, till her time will not pass. I wouldn't be able to annihilate myself if I knew that she's still here, constantly in need of protection. But if she eventually disappeared… There wouldn't be much left, not even a streak of warm light, golden sparkles behind the eyelids. Be it eighty hours, or years, it doesn't matter.

I felt the car slowing down. I opened my eyes and threw my father a look of irritation and inquiry.

_We need to fill the tank up. _

We pulled into a seedy gas station which unquestionably provided some second-rate quality petrol. Despite minor chances of being caught red handed while moving too fast, Carlisle was filling the tank up and walking round in a too human pace. Definitely too sluggish. I watched him with a grimace on my face.

James was moving away.

Alice, Jasper, and Bella were too. It was the only thing which made me stick to one position.

The place we stopped at was surrounded by the forest. Vehemently thumping against its branches, the air was gliding, creaking with some trash-sounds stirred in. Consequently, my irritation was escalating on an even more terrifying level, particularly because there was not a specific reason to be irritated at. I couldn't stand sitting idle in the car, staring outside the window, experiencing Carlisle's patience or Emmet's vicious circle of thoughts any longer. I pulled the door handle. Behind my back, I heard Emmett smack his lips and in the rear mirror I saw him roll his eyes. He was irritated to the same degree I was.

The wind was blowing stronger than I thought. It was sharper and more penetrating, cold even for me. It was blowing the tails of my jacket and hair. The gust, which was rather claiming something than rushing now, sustained the hopelessness in the air. Suddenly I heard someone's thoughts.

_You are late, you've lost everything that was precious to you and there's nothing you can do about it by now. You're a loser. Light's going to fade away sooner or later, isn't it? It either burns out, or a stranger extinguishes it. Yours has been smothered because of you. Get used to it. _

I gritted my teeth even harder and made my way to the forest. People must think it's impenetrable.

Maybe running after him would be a faster way to get him, rather than chasing him by car. That, however, would be too risky. I'd leave my scent and footprints behind. Would it be worth it? If I haunted him down faster, needless to say, Bella would be safer, more durable, too. I'd have more time, more light, love, more of her…

"You'd better not."

I twitched nervously and quickly, I turned my head too rapidly to where the voice came from.

Approximately five yards away, there was an old man sitting on a rotten bench that seemed to be as old as he was. Occupied by my own thoughts and plans, I hadn't noticed him before. No doubt he spoke to me as if he was looking straight through me.

I took a quick glance at my car and then made a step towards the old man. Carlisle was still filling up the car, so that we would not have to stop on the way. It's going to take him some time and I couldn'tdo much about it.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

I took another step. The forest rustled, whispered, called, the darkness tempted, branches rubbed against one another by the strong flurry of wind. I was almost certain my voice would not make it because of that.

I was wrong.

"I advised you not to do it, young man. It's better to stay with your family rather than enter such a forest alone, believe me. You'll get lost, even though, you may think you know the way." Answered the man, waving his hand at the same time. Or rather what was left of it. Coming closer, I realized that it wasn't just the hand he was missing, but one leg too. He had a thick grey beard that near his mouth was yellow, which was an indisputable consequence of smoking. His clothes were as old as he was. And they were worn through at some places, stained with human leftovers.

His thoughts were weird. He was scatterbrained. Snatches of reflections only, unusual word associations. I wasn't sure if he, considered within the boundaries of human acceptability, would be counted as mentally competent. Or maybe, he simply was an eccentric man. All in all, he wouldn't do much harm to me.

Standing within arm's reach I noticed a knife and a piece of wood which he had placed beside him on the bench. Was he carving earlier? There were neither marks, nor the resin smell which would indicate this piece of wood being carved.

"I'm not going anywhere, just waiting for my father to fill the car, that's all."

He nodded his head and smiled in a nastily yet knowing way. A memory flashed through his mind, too fast, however, for me to get it.

"Where you heading to? I can see that you have an aim, young lad."

He spoke so oddly. It's been a long time since I last heard somebody speaking this way. All in all, he was old and that could explain everything. He was a disabled serviceman, I guessed. Seemingly, it was during the war when he lost his limbs and all that.

He didn't seem to be a stranger to me which was a complete absurdity. I was a lot older than him. If I had ever met him, I would have remembered him. A vampire's memory was so painfully concise, cold and analytical. It was to last for the eternity.

I shrugged my shoulders indifferently once I saw he was still waiting for the answer.

He rubbed his hip with one hand trying to warm it up. A piece of his ring finger was missing. With each second I discovered other parts of the body he lacked. It was exactly the same case with me, and it was just a matter of time. Perfect on the outside, but the more you looked at me, the more disturbing details you spotted. Abnormal and dreadful ones.

He sighed looking at me with weary, conceivably disappointed eyes.

"Yeah, right, pardon me for that. You haven't decided yet."

I did not answer. The forest was rustling with growing intensity and menace. I could hear the branches crunching. This time, I raised my voice.

"How have you lost…?"

I didn't finish the question as I didn't even know what I wanted to ask about. He was smiling maliciously. His thoughts were bitter, full of bile. Full of layers of sadness, sorrow, despair, and hatred to the undefined, and all of this had gathered for ages.

I slowly began to feel sick, drained, and as rotten as the old man was.

"I was ready to sacrifice myself for the country." He rocked back and forth, the bench was creaking accompanying the branches behind. "Yeah… for the country, young fellow. For my home. I did not lose my life. But, my hand, leg and a few other things so much ascribed to men. Dangerously!"

He laughed with a piercing titter.

"But what do honor, friends, family mean when your mother country's calling, needs your blood and sacrifice? Your soul? Tell me."

And so I suddenly got it.

He resembled me. Oh yeah. I was just like him. Before I became a vampire, before I had caught the Spanish flu. I couldn't stop thinking of my eighteenth birthday which had been approaching fast. These thoughts equaled glory, showing off my courage and the transformation into a real man to me. I wanted to die for and sacrifice myself to the country entirely. I wanted to become a hero. My mind was completely filled with such thoughts, everything else had been put on the sidelines. I nodded in assent when my mum talked about that "terrible war", but deep inside, I was just hoping for the pendulum to swing the time faster away and the sun to traverse the sky at greater pace. I was never to know it. War ended before it reached me, or rather, before I could join the army. I remember when once I sensed the smell of gunpowder wafting in the air, saw the reflection of fire on the sabers, heard the neighs of horses and the crowd shouting thunderously. There was a flurry of feverish preparations for the long journey ahead. My muscles were trembling and roaring to move, the same as they are now when I'm thinking about James. Go, go! Finish this up!

"As far as country is concerned, they mean nothing." My voice sounded too hollow and toneless even for me. As if the words were uttered by somebody else. By a stranger.

"Exactly, young man. And you know it." The old man fumbled in his pocket looking for something, not taking his eyes off of me. He took out an almost crumpled cigarette, and lit it, hiding it as best as he could with his hand from the wind. He got veiled in greyish, bitter wisp of smoke for a while. It was gone the very next second because of a waft of wind. The fag was burning out quickly.

Now, I didn't feel half as much attached to America as I used to be ninety years ago. I was happy to live where I was born, but it wouldn't make much of a difference to me if we moved out. On the contrary, Bella meant everything to me. She became a base which my whole life started to rely on the day I met her.

And this is how it's going to be till the very end. I will not set myself free of her, or catch the Spanish flu, or find a remedy to heal myself.

My own home.

I almost smiled at the mere thought. It seemed to be so real, so perfectly depicting what she was for me. She was the person absolutely worth sacrificing my life for, to the very last part of my being. I kicked a stone, absent-mindedly.

"And what is it you're still pondering over, hah? "

The man was downright bored with me. Furious, because of that. I knew it, I read his mind and his opinion on such guys, standing in the cold wind, digging larger and larger holes in the ground. I shouldn't have done that as it was so frozen that not even a shovel could dig in.

_Idler. Mindless do-nothing. If he had lived in my times, he should have been punished by the lash for being so lazy. Spoiled brat, that's the whole truth! _

I couldn't help a subtle, idiotic smile appearing on my face and he has just added a new epithet to his litany of insults.

_And on top of that, a dumb fool. _

Pondering over war in the human part of my life, I had never considered it as something I could have both, survived and lost so many parts of my body. It'd always been some kind of one-way-ticket thing. All or nothing.

The same concerned Bella. But whatever her feelings, interests in me were, they meant everything to me.

"Do you miss…?"

Apparently, I was unable to ask him a coherent question.

He snorted then spit on the grass. Drops of saliva blown away by wind were quickly disappearing into the blades of grass. Some of them left and shined like melted glass.

"What do I have to miss? Everything's tradable. You lose one thing and get another. I'm not the first to say it, will not be the last. "

"But, doesn't it disturb you? Don't you want…?"

"Aren't you listening to what I'm saying? Focus! For God's sake, it's not so difficult!"

He was staring at me intensely. His bloodshot eyes were unpleasantly yellow in the corners. He didn't blink even once.

"You lose one thing, you get another one." He uttered with great emphasis marking each word by nodding his head.

He was still piercing me with his eyes. It has been a very long time since I last felt awkward due to another man's sight. That was so… _human._

"I see." My voice still sounding silent. It almost vanished in the surrounding din.

The old man straightened up very quickly. That was enough for the bench to crack.

"I doubt it." The tone of his voice was as cold as his eyes. "You youngsters, think you've got all the answers. Perceive yourselves as adults! Even if you had the experience of all the rulers in the world, it would do nothing! Empty minded! Hot-tempered! Sentimental! Adorations?!"

He hit the bench with his hand. Some decayed chips fell back to the ground together. Along with his knife and the piece of wood which had previously been placed next to where he sat.

"Bullshit!"

He was breathing with difficulty. His chest rose and fell deeply and nervously. He inhaled large gulps of cold air and simply puffed. As he clenched his fist, white, thin bones appeared from beneath the stain- coated and senile skin. They resembled those of a bird, empty inside. They seemed very, very old and terrifyingly fragile. He got some sickly-color on his cheeks. His thoughts were even more incoherent than before; I couldn't read a single statement.

Then suddenly all of it stopped.

His breathing rate became even, his fist loosened, and his face paled. His thoughts were world-weary. Radiating with calm, spider like hopelessness and sickness.

"Take care of yourself, young fellow, as well as you can. You have no business in being here." He suddenly fell quiet. "You interrupted me here".

I nodded my head quickly.

In my mind, I heard that Carlisle had already begun looking for me using his thoughts and his sight, too. As well as him, the car was ready with a tank full of gas. It was time to go. Time to fight. All or nothing.

And finally, go home.


End file.
